Hello all FCP Users, I'm wrapping up an edit, and I was wondering if relinking the media assets from Apple Pro Res Proxy to Apple Pro Res 422, if the assets are relinked in the edit, and exported through Compressor as an M2V for a Standard Def DVD, would it even worth relinking the media, and exporting it all out, would their be a huge quality jump or not. I've done a few small tests with relinking some small clips in my time-line and since it's mostly only interviews, shot with 2 locked down Cannon 5D/Mark2 cameras, I did not see a huge jump in quality on the time-line or in exporting 2 test QuickTime files and comparing the two.

Obviously there was a difference in file size, but I'm not an expert, but I initially edited in Apple Pro Res Proxy to conserve space and to do an off-line edit, then relink at the end, and export, as others so often do, but this Apple Pro Res Proxy, really doesn't look all that much different, at least at what I'm looking at, but like I said, I am not concerned about HD quality, as this will be only available on SD DVD, and may also be broadcast on a local HD channel, in which case I'd send them a "Same as Source" QT .mov file, and they can convert it to whatever broadcast spec they'd need, with having an uncompressed file version, but mainly for this post right now, I'm looking at doing an export from FCP, relinking media, and through Compressor, to an SD-DVD.

Please any advice, comments, suggestions, directions, or any past project similar testing results that you have had, please share.

There's no perfect answer to this riddle Tom. It's definitely not easy to detect the information that is thrown out when compressing to ProRes Proxy, but nonetheless, there is substantial information missing. Go a few generations down from your master and you will begin to see anomalies, which will show up primarily as video noise, fringing, and motion artifacts. You will also find that color correction is much more difficult.

The bottom line is, if this project is really important to anyone, or if there is even a remote possibility it will ever be repurposed for any reason in the future, you should absolutely spend the time to up-res it to its best online quality.